™Ryo Suzuki -2™
As for Tai-Chi Chuan, the heart is the most important -- it is what my Chinese
Tai-Chi teacher, Yang Ming-Shi always says. He says,"You must have a wet
heart all the time. A dry heart is a dead heart. To prevent your heart from
becoming dry, you have to care every day."

I was very interested to find in his idea something in common with the idea of
Ryotaro Shiba, my favorite novelist. According to the writer, when he tries to
think of what literature is or what a writer is, the following questions are
important; "How much child-like can you still be?": "A writer cannot help but
stop writing when one has lost one's child " :"Where there is not so much child-
like heart or youthful sensibility, there is no art": "The state of your heart being
dry is far from art."

I believe we need to keep our hearts wet in order to write good haiku. At the
same time, probably we can maintain our youth much longer if we try to write
excellent haiku.

on the hilltop
birds' twittering warms
chilly air
to "young earthworm" by Ryo Suzuki
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